Most people agree that the aroma of fresh semen is potent, pervasive and above all , incredibly persistent. It has a primitive feral quality that is undeniably aphrodisiac.
As any Mum with a teenage son or girl with a teenage brother will tell you, a boy's bedroom has a signature odour of stale sperm and pheromonal sweat. A mother or sister collecting items for the wash will become inured to crackling, yellow - stained sheets, stiffened socks and even their own knickers, stiff with dried semen, purloined from the family laundry basket and hidden under the bed. Such is life, the world over.
This odour is very unpleasant, as bad as that of faeces or four day old sweat that has succumbed to bacterial action or the gaseous emissions of an excessive meat eater.
A healthy human animal produces a medley of smells that is entirely natural and is in no way offensive - in fact, smells convey information about you that is as important as verbal communication. Your state of health or nutritional status, your fertility or virility, your sexual interest in someone you are with, are you relaxed or bunched up with tension, the list goes on. This facility is omnipresent in animals and has developed over aeons. We human animals have tuned out of this area of communication, assailed by decades of TV ads that demonise BO and peddle unnatural chemicals in the form of shower gels, deodorants, anti-perspirants, body lotions and so on.
The sentiments above, thoroughly endorsed by me, were imparted by Divora on a sleeper train en route to Berlin from Paris.
I bumped into her, literally, in the queue for the cafeteria. She was just ahead of me, clutching an empty tray. Her credit card slipped from her fingers and clicked onto the carriage floor. Jumping back and bending over to retrieve it, she banged into my genitals at about the level of her perineum. My penis , of course, began a journey. She apologised, a blush betraying her awareness of the exact nature of the contact. I pooh poohd away her words. My nascent erection was fully visible to her through my shorts and I hastened to cover it by placing my empty food tray between us. An unaffected giggle told me she was aware of my embarrassment.
Calmly, she offered to place my food order on her tray and reached into the display unit for my ham salad and her chicken sandwich. A couple of beers followed and we repaired to a table.